Jordan swimmers impress at FINA World Championships

AMMAN — The gap between Jordan and the fastest swimmers in the world has narrowed once again at the 17th FINA World Championships held in Hungary, according to the Jordan Olympic Committee News Service. National records tumbled as a number of swimmers set new personal bests to further highlight the tremendous progress being made by the Kingdom’s swimmers. Among the many highlights, Mohammad Bedour, Amro Al Wir and Dara Al Bakri all recorded B qualification times for the Youth Olympic Games (YOG) that will be held Buenos Aires, Argentina next year.

Bedour clock the B times for the 50m and 100m freestyle events with swims of 24.15 and 52.68 seconds respectively.

His teammate Wir stepped nearer to South America with a time of 2:23.09 for the 200m breaststroke, while Bakri’s new 27.23 record in the women’s 50m was another undoubted highlight. Head coach Ali Al Nawaiseh praised the swimmers and said the result were from years of hard work. “The World Championships gave our swimmers the experience and level of competition they need to move on,” he said.

“They are still young, but they showed great maturity in Hungary and we can only expect these times to get even better.” Although only 18, the relative ‘veteran’ and Olympian Khader Baqlah broke the Jordan record in the 200m and 400m freestyle events, with his 1:47.68 time in the 400m faster than the time required to qualify for last year’s Rio Olympic Games. Not to be outdone, his sister Talita was in super form in becoming the first Jordanian woman to break a minute in the 100m freestyle. The two-time Olympian also set a new national record in the 50m butterfly.